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Tuesday, July 03, 2012

I actually have a few kinds of food fear. I mean, because everyone does, right? RIGHT.

One of the kinds (and please prepare yourself because this post is going to be an eyerolling FEST) of food fear that I have is If I Don't Eat It Now and Then I'm Hungry Later WHAT THEN?

This happened a lot back when I worked in a high rise in San Francisco and had 60 minutes EXACTLY DON'T YOU TAKE A SECOND LONGER to find and eat my lunch. I used to race down to the corner deli with my coworker friend and we'd load up To-Go boxes with salad sold by the pound, trying our ever loving best not to go over the one pound mark.

We would shove salad into that box with all of our might and hope that it didn't come sproinging open at the register.

We ate a lot of salad and bread and whatever else we could jam into those boxes because then we wouldn't be all BACK OFF I'M STARVING around 3pm when we weren't allowed to leave our desks even in the event of an emergency because we worked for helpless douches that didn't know how to do anything for themselves including retrieve water from the big Alhambra cooler.

Douches.

Anyway. That was one kind of food fear.

Another kind of food fear that I have is the kind that shifts into full gear about this time of year when I see tomatoes growing on the plants in the garden and yet I still have canned tomatoes in the cupboard and frozen tomatoes in the chesty and OH MY GOD WHAT IF THEY'RE STILL HERE WHEN THE TOMATOES RIPEN ON THE PLANTS.

I realize that for most people this is not only NOT a fear-inducing situation but also not likely to happen because most people either find a store of food to be a positive thing or don't can food because they go to the store like normal people.

I'm neither a hoarder nor a normal, and so I sit in the middle being all I Don't Have The Pantry Space For This Year's Tomatoes If I Don't Eat All This Crap.

It's a devious cyclical thing, I tell you.

But, this year, I win.

I've devised two new recipes that are all, "Hey, pantry full of canned tomatoes - WATCH YOUR ASS." as well as, "Hey, neighbor's zucchini the size of my torso, I WILL EAT YOUR ASS." and such.

They use canned tomatoes and fresh summer squash and they're both good and one of them uses some of the ground beef from our beef share that's currently clogging up the chesty where I'll need space for more future frozen tomatoes OH MY GOD IT NEVER STOPS.

It's like the US Postal Service of food, people. If that makes any sense. Which I sorta doubt that it does.

Anyway, for those recipes:

Pasta Primavera (a personal triumph since I can actually make this while it's still spring) and Stuffed Zucchini (a personal triumph because I actually did away with an entire oversized zucchini without having to ruin a chocolate cake while sneaking it in there. Score.).

I haven't published the Stuffed Zucchini recipe on Examiner yet, so you get it first. Just one of the many benefits of being a FinnyKnits reader - early access to zucchini recipes AND new inventions of swears. SWEET SASSY MY ASSY!

See? Good times.

Stuffed Zucchini Visually unappealing recipe by moi

Makes 2 servings

Ingredients

1 pound of ground beef

1 pint of whole or crushed tomatoes

1 enormo zucchini, halved, hollowed out

1/2 onion (yellow, white, whatevs), chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

2 T oregano, chopped

1 T basil, chopped

1 cup of brown rice

Bunch of fresh basil leaves

Parmesan

Salt and pepper to taste

To make

Preheat oven to 355 degrees.

Fill a 8x8 glass dish with 1/2 inch of water and put the halved zucchini boats in the dish, cut side up.

In a large pan, brown beef over medium high heat. Drain. Stir in onions and garlic and cook until onion is soft. Stir in oregano, basil, and tomatoes. Once it's all mixey-fied, give it a quick taste and add salt and pepper until you don't want to spit it out from blandness.

Fill both halves of the zucchini with the beef filling and slice some Parmesan over the top.

Start the rice per package instructions and let it cook while the zucchini bakes.

Before jamming the zucchini in the oven, cover with foil. Then bake it for 20-25 minutes, until the zucchini is soft.

6 comments:

I have food fear #1 at restaurants (compounded by the waste-not-want-not credo and the clean plate compunction) even though I tell myself I can take the unfinished portion with me and eat it later if I'm hungry. Re the tomatoes from last year fear, I finished off the freezer tomatoes from 2010 a few weeks ago, just in time to make room for the CSA zucchini that keeps coming. Gah.

For the couple of years we grew Ronde de Nice zucchini (an heirloom variety much like the now-ubiquitous 8-Ball zucchini), my favorite way to cook it was to stuff it. My made-up recipe was much like yours, except I mixed the rice in with the stuffing instead of serving it separately.

We're not growing it this year, though, because I didn't buy anymore seeds for it. In fact, I don't think we planted any zucchini at all. Huh. Weird.

Yeah, I've grown that, too. It got infested with squash bugs and I've never been able to go back. It was handy though, and took like a champ to stuffing. I had to steal this zucchini from a friend who was out of town. Though she hugged me when I told her that I'd pruned her zucchini, so I'm not sure it could be considered stealing.

[2013 update: You can't comment as an anonymous person anymore. Too many douchebags were leaving bullshit SPAM comments and my inbox was getting flooded, but if you're here to comment in a real way like a real person, go to it.]

Look at you commenting, that's fun.

So, here's the thing with commenting, unless you have an email address associated with your own profile, your comment will still post, but I won't have an email address with which to reply to you personally.

Sucks, right?

Anyway, to remedy this, I usually come back to my posts and post replies in the comment field with you.

But, if you ever want to email me directly to talk about pumpkins or shoes or what it's like to spend a good part of your day Swiffering - shoot me an email to finnyknitsATgmailDOTcom.